Who me?

My friend Cath posted the option of being interviewed on her blog. I will offer the same. If you want to be "interviewed" by me with five questions, write "interview me" in the comment section below. I promise to come up with some interesting questions that won't be mean or too personal.

So, here are the questions I got from Cath and my responses.

1. how is your life different from how you thought it would be when you were 18?

I think the main differences are in my 18 year old youthful dreaming I thought I would have more kids by now (ha ha) and I always thought I would have gotten into housing much sooner than we did. But who was to know that the housing market would boom just as we were entering grad school? Other than that I think it is pretty much the way I hoped and dreamed. I have a wonderful husband, a couple of great kids, am healthy, am active in my church and am involved in music and other creative pursuits here and there.

2. what is the best part about having an international family?

I love the things we have learned from each country we have lived in and the way knowing other lands and people expands your mind. I love being connected to other places in the world. I love knowing that there are faithful members of the church all over the world. I'm happy that my parents raised me with enough confidence to travel all over Europe at a young age with my brothers in tow sometimes to countries where I didn't speak the language very well or at all. I was exposed to so much beautiful art, architecture and culture. It has shaped my life.

3. what do you like the best about yourself as a person?

That's a hard one. It's hard to pinpoint a "best" quality, but I'll mention a couple of things I like about myself. Even though this one can be a two edged sword, I like my sensitivity, my compassion and caring about life, people etc. I also like that I'm willing to keep learning from others and from life's experiences and keep trying to be a better person. I like that I'm able to reach out to and connect with a wide variety of people and become friends. I think there is always something to learn from everyone. Everyone has something to offer.

4. tell how you and warren ended up together - from first meeting to wedding date!

This is the fun one. Warren and I met at the Foreign Language Housing Complex (now known as the Foreign Language Student Residence) at BYU. He was in the Portuguese house and I was in the German house. I walked by the commons room one day and saw him at the piano with a friend. I thought, I'd like to get to know that guy. But he was Mr. Popular and if anything, I've always avoided liking the same guy as everyone else. I was not going to be one of the sheep in the flock. But he ended up being my home teacher, so we did get to know each other on a casual level. However, I wasn't interested in dating him because when I asked him what he was going to do with his master's degree he said he didn't know. I needed more firm plans for the future. But despite all of this our interest in dating still grew naturally and at the end of two semesters of knowing each other (and him avoiding dating me because it was his personal policy not to date someone he was home teaching) he asked me out. I laughed. It was the busiest week of my entire semester: tech week for a show I was in. Plus homework etc.

We started hanging out more and more but then it was time for summer vacation. We wrote. When I came back from England and he came back from Brasil he chose to get a job in Provo where I was working for the rest of the summer in order to date me. So he got to see the other side of me instead of the highly stressed student side and it pretty much cemented our relationship. But we didn't get engaged till December 22, 1998 and married on July 9, 1999.
He wanted to propose sooner but several things happened. Over Thanksgiving he didn't propose because he knew all our friends back at BYU expected it and he didn't want to do it just because everyone expected it then. Then one time he took me out in the snow in Provo to propose but we got invited by a family to walk around their estate looking at their Christmas lights. When we were done and just standing there and not doing anything I told him I had cold feet and he got grumpy and we went home. On the drive back to Cali he wanted to propose along the way but we had bad weather most of the drive. So he finally proposed in a park on a swing set in Goleta (near Santa Barbara) in the morning hours. He had asked me if I wanted to see the sunrise. I knew what was coming. He asked whether I wanted to go to the mountains or the beach. I said the beach, so he drove me to the mountains. He had written a poem for the proposal and had forgotten it at home, so after the sunrise we drove back home. He ran inside and his mom, up doing Christmas baking, saw him and asked him to go to the store to get some butter, eggs, etc. So after the proposal in the park we went to the store. When we got back Warren said, here is the butter, here are the eggs and here is Dorothea's ring!

We were married in the Los Angeles temple (where both of our parents were also married) on a hot day in July. I crashed (physically) from all the stress leading up to the wedding and missed most of my wedding reception, but I've decided it's more important to have a good marriage than a great wedding reception! And that is my story. It's hard to shorten. I hope that wasn't too boring for others to read. Well, if they didn't want to read it they probably stopped long ago.

5. which do you prefer - mayo or miracle whip??

Funny you should ask. My family is a adamant believer in Best Foods Mayo all the way. It's a REALLY big deal in my family. Warren prefers miracle whip but will put up with mayo!